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Waiting for death behind bars
Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are waiting to die
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yuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are waiting to die. Most people who recognize their names know them as members of the Bali Nine who have been condemned to death for drug-related crimes.
Sukumaran and Chan participated in a theater workshop that I conducted in Kerobokan prison in Kuta, Bali, several years ago.
Together with other incarcerated men and women they read Dante's 14th century Italian poem, 'The Divine Comedy'.
Dante too had been condemned to death and his poem inspired Sukumaran, Chan, and the other participants to reflect on the meaning of justice in their diverse religious traditions ' a Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Collectively they wrote a play that interwove lines from Dante's text with stories from their own lives that paralleled the journey from hell to heaven that is the subject of 'The Divine Comedy.'
The tales told by the men and women in Kerobokan prison were as unsettling as the torments in the 'Inferno' portion of Dante's poem, but in spite of the abuse and betrayals that led them to a point in their lives where as Dante wrote 'the straight path was lost,' none of the prisoners lost hope.
Even Sukumaran and Chan believed that international appeals on their behalf would stop the government from carrying out the barbaric ritual of state execution.
Neither claimed innocence. They admitted their crimes, but wondered like much of the rest of the world if those mistakes merited the punishment of death.
What I remember most about Sukumaran and Chan was the generous way in which they encouraged other members of the workshop to forget about their problems for a few hours a week and throw themselves into the collective work of creating theater.
Prison is dehumanizing, but when, after months of preparation, the group presented their play, its buoyant spirit of camaraderie belied the grimness of the circumstances under which it had been created.
One woman Sukumaran and Chan persuaded to participate in the workshop in spite of her shyness wrote a monologue inspired by Dante's references to the stars that close each canticle of 'The Divine Comedy.'
Her theme of perseverance epitomized the attitude of the entire cast when she imagined a little girl who vows never to give up pursuing her dreams. 'I will pursue my star.
I will not stop running until the star is in my palm,' she said in the quiet voice of her alto ego and then described the character's plight.
Her soul slips away as the star fades, but there is a power that lifts her up and she keeps running on the pebbles that tear her feet that are oozing with blood, but still as strong as steel.
One of the phantoms in the 'Inferno' asks Dante why he cannot stop staring at the sinners in hell, and I think the answer is that he sees himself reflected in them.
Those who take the time to read Dante's poem will also see themselves, as will those who look at people in prison as human beings who have made mistakes like the rest of us.
They are as fallible as the justice system that put them in prison, a system that is also capable of making mistakes.
One of those mistakes is to impose the death penalty on men such as Sukumaran and Chan, whose crimes were non-violent.
I regret that I was not permitted to return to the prison after our workshop ended, but I believe they deserve the opportunity to pay for their mistakes behind bars and climb out of hell the way Dante does at the end of 'Inferno' speaking the words from the poem that they spoke at the end of their play: 'And then we emerged to see again the stars.'
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The writer, a professor of theater, is a member of the executive committee of The American Friends Service Committee (Northeast Region), which facilitates theater workshops in prisons in collaboration with his students from Wesleyan University and the Yale Divinity School's Institute of Sacred Music
